RKD STUDIES

Several wandering Dutch artist were able to earn some money for a short while at the Palatinate court in Heidelberg and later in Mannheim, without becoming real court artists like their colleagues in Düsseldorf. The Berckheyde brothers, Gerrit and Job, journeyed up the Rhine and first spent time in Cologne and Bonn, where they painted and sold their works, before they ended up in Heidelberg and Mannheim. They depicted the elector and his household, going for a hunt [1-3] (paintings in Copenhagen, Leipzig and Heidelberg).¹

Heidelberg Castle and its surroundings have been drawn and painted repeatedly by Dutch and Flemish artists [4]. Here we only draw attention to the anonymous drawings in Stuttgart [5] and the print model of a Monogrammist J.C.²

3
Jan Blom
Wooded landscape with a deer hunt
Leipzig, Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig, inv./cat.nr. 300

In the 1660s the two German artists Johann Heinrich Roos (1631-1685) and his brother Theodor Roos (1638-1698?) were active at the Palatine court. With them the Dutch-Italianate landscape painting became familiar here, to which we will return later.³ Towards 1672 Jan and Jacob Bunnik came from Frankfurt to Heidelberg and Speyer, where they supposedly worked for Karl I Ludwig (1617-1680) [6] and counsellor Jonkmann.⁴ In 1658 the brothers Wallerant and Bernard Vaillant used the title of a ’peintre au chateau d’Heidelberg’.⁵ They also came from Frankfurt, where they had stayed a while. However, all of this is not significant. Toussaint Gelton (c. 1630-1680) was sent to Heidelberg by King Christian V of Denmark, to paint the electress.⁶

The collection of Heidelberg Castle appears not to have been of major importance, which is understandable when one considers the unfortunate politics of the Winter King, who had to leave his country in 1620. After the death of Elector Karl II (1651-1685), to whom the Palatine was assigned by the emperor, the possessions were divided. Some paintings came into the collection of the Duke of Orléans; others ended up in Hannover, Mannheim, apart from the rest, which was auctioned. The core of the collection consisted of portraits by Dutch artists such as Michiel van Mierevelt, Daniel Mijtens, Gerard van Honthorst [7-9],⁷ Bartholomeus van der Helst (?), Jacques Vaillant as well as works by Johann Ulrich Mayr and Joachim von Sandrart I and many Flemish portrait painters. Furthermore there were pictures from the marine painters Hendrick Vroom and Jan Porcellis, next to works by Cornelis van Poelenburch, Egbert van Heemskerck and Adriaen van der Cabel.⁸

6
Johann Baptist de Ruel
Portrait of Karl I Ludwg, Elector Palatine (1617-1680), 1676
Heidelberg, Kurpfälzisches Museum

7
Gerard van Honthorst
Allegory of Justice. The History of the Winter King's family, dated 1636
Boston (Massachusetts), Museum of Fine Arts Boston

The collection in Mannheim Castle became more important in the beginning of the 18th century when a part of the famous Düsseldorf gallery was incorporated. From there it was taken into safety from the French in 1758, but after six years Elector Carl Theodor (1724-1799) [10] sent the collection back. He himself had a predilection for Dutch cabinet pieces, which he collected with a lot of taste: Gerard Dou, Frans van Mieris, Adriaen and Isaac van Ostade, Gerard ter Borch, Jan Steen, Karel Dujardin, but he also owned two paintings by Rembrandt [11-12].⁹ German artists studied these Dutch pictures frequently, but this brings us far into the 18th century, about which we will speak in another place.¹⁰

10
Anna Dorothea Therbusch
Portrait of Carl Theodor, Elector of Bavaria (1724-1799), dated 1763
Mannheim, Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen

11
Rembrandt
The Holy Family, c. 1634
Munich, Alte Pinakothek, inv./cat.nr. 1318

12
studio of Rembrandt and Rembrandt or studio of Rembrandt free after Rembrandt
The sacrifice of Abraham (Genesis 22:10-12), dated 1636
Munich, Alte Pinakothek, inv./cat.nr. 438